Just Between Us
by stxpsign
Summary: After a trip to 1887, Lucy, Wyatt, Jiya, and Rufus decide to go out for drinks, but when Rufus and Jiya have to cancel due to a family emergency, Lucy and Wyatt are left at the bar alone, and it's decided that it is time for a real talk between them. What exactly will said talk lead to? [Originally posted to AO3 March 8th, 2017 as a response to prompt found inside.]


A/N: A response to the prompt "Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus are supposed to go to a bar after a mission but Rufus cancels (reason to be chosen by the author) and Lucy and Wyatt go alone."

* * *

In her youth, Lucy Preston was one of the biggest fans of water parks. By the time her sixteenth birthday rolled around, some new one, that she couldn't remember the name of now for the life of her, in Southern Washington State was all the rave in the water park community. And, for the summer after her sixteenth birthday, her parents - well, her mom and Henry - decided to take her and a few friends there for a week. It was Lucy's sweet sixteen.

Amy was only nine at the time, but her mom insisted that she come along, it's not like they could leave a nine-year-old at home for the week. And Amy used her youngest child powers to convince their parents to let her bring along two friends as well, which turned out to be Brianna and Corinne as their parents were the only ones willing to let their young daughters go out-of-state with the Preston-Wallaces. But, just days before going, Corinne cancelled, and Amy could only bring Brianna. It's not that Amy didn't like having Brianna there, she was one of her best friends at the time, but it's the first time it was clear to her that she hated people who cancelled last minute. At the time, which was long before she and her sister got close, Lucy couldn't care less about how upset Amy was, but she did know she was upset. Sadly, it would happen to Amy a lot in her life and she would be in the worst mood after each time it happened.

However, as it turned out, Amy wasn't the only Preston daughter like that.

* * *

After a trip to 1879 Pennsylvania, and realizing just how bad it was that she had to let Richard Henry Pratt go through with what he would do, had to preserve the history, though Lucy still couldn't ever put her finger on what Rittenhouse would want to change as Pratt's actions had Rittenhouse written all over them. The frustration led Rufus, Jiya, Wyatt, and Lucy to deciding to meet up later that night at Portera's as all three were in need of drinks.

Lucy hadn't known why, but she felt dirty, like she should take a shower before going out later. And that's exactly what she did, went back to the makeshift apartment she had been using after she ran out that night due to what her mother said, and took a nice, long hot shower. Putting on the jeans from earlier, but deciding to wear more of a sweater type shirt than the Stanford t shirt she had on earlier, Lucy proceeded to blow dry her hair.

It wasn't until she was getting on her shoes, and had only ten minutes before the time they agreed to meet up at the bar that she saw the text from Rufus. Something about Jiya's grandmother and a fall that landed said grandmother in the hospital, so they needed to cancel. She knew it was a perfectly good reason to have to cancel, and Rufus did say that they had been looking forward to the drinks and had that not happened they would definitely be there, but her blood started to boil. She did, too, hate people who cancelled last minute.

However, now being so upset, she knew she needed a drink more than ever. Texting Wyatt to make sure he'd still want to meet up for drinks and getting an answer of an affirmative, she ordered the Uber to the bar.

* * *

Lucy wasn't sure how early he had arrived, but by the time she entered the bar, Wyatt was already sitting at a table, beer in front of him, and waving her over. At least this meant he wouldn't spontaneously cancel on her. And, somehow, the presence of him made her heart flutter, forgetting about how angry Rufus had made her just a little over ten minutes ago.

Passing her a menu as she sat down at the table, Lucy didn't even get to give Wyatt a 'hey' before she had to mutter out a, "Thanks."

In the past, when they came to this place, each would just order some regular, plain beers. There wasn't the need for anything fancy, but her first drink that night would be one of the bar's specialty cocktails, something called Rye Maple Fizz that was rye, lemon, maple syrup, egg white, soda, and Angostura bitters. It was interesting to say the least, and when she ordered it, she got one of Wyatt's trademark smirks in return, but it didn't stop her from continuing to try the stranger of the drinks.

* * *

Now, she was on something called La Bonne Vie, made with Plymouth, Fresh Lemon and Grapefruit Juice, Fresh Basil, and Bitters. It tasted surprisingly well, much better than the Rye Maple Fizz, which she had dared Wyatt to order. Her only complaint was that it was just so pink, her least favorite color. The two were tipsy and quite close to being drunk by now, sharing military history facts and finding it, for some reason, hilarious when the other exclaimed that they already knew that too.

At Wyatt's fact about LBJ pulling out his penis – or, if Johnson was alive today and present at the conversation, he would prefer they call it his "Jumbo" - when asked about why the United States was involved in the Vietnam War, Lucy frowned and looked down. Thinking he finally got the upper hand, Wyatt poked fun by sarcastically saying, "What? Did I finally come up with something our historian doesn't know?"

Tracing her finger around the rim of her drink, she looked up with him with a, "Not at all. Just …" She took a pause, trying to find the right word, "Nostalgic." She immediately noticed a change in his expression to more of a confused one, furrowing his eyebrows and everything, she decided to poke back at him for what he said just a few moments ago, "Am I using too big of a word for Wyatt Logan to understand?"

He shook his head and let out a laugh, "No, just a little not sure what you mean," At Lucy's head tilt after he said that, he chose to explain, "It's not like Lyndon B. Johnson is one of the historical men we've met yet, or has hit on you, as far as I know at least."

She brought up her finger to point at him as she stated, "You're right there, but …" Taking a deep breath, she went on, "Saying that always got a laugh out of my students, every time I taught it, I would get a lecture hall full of laughter," She sighed before continuing, "Sometimes I miss the simplicity of it all."

"Do you though?" It was his only question he could come up with, it was hard time traveling, and he knew that. Not only the circumstances his female and black co time travelers were thrown into, but the concept in general. Then the existence of Rittenhouse trying to change the whole course of the country to better their place in society. And that isn't even mentioning how seasick he'd feel due to the actual time traveling.

"Yes!" She exclaimed, appalled he could even think she wouldn't be, "I had my sister, my mom was sick and the man I thought was my father was dead, but I was never having to face this 'Rittenhouse Royalty', whatever that means. She never told me of it, and Benjamin Cahill wasn't coming around. I was able to think I was part of a good family, and that my mom used ethical ways to build Stanford's History department. Sometimes grading all the papers was tough, and not having tenure was annoying, but I didn't have to deal with," She put both of her hands in front of her to be able to just fly them all over the place as she finished, "All this!"

"Well, that's depressing and almost enough to fully sober one up," Wyatt stated.

She nodded as she just said, "Flynn told me, on our first trip, you know, at the Hindenburg, that I wasn't meant to be a teacher. But I'd much rather be just a teacher now than be doing this."

"Well," Wyatt cleared his throat before continuing, "I never got the privilege to be in one of your classes but you shouldn't say 'just a teacher'. You weren't ever just a teacher, Lucy. I know all the passion and life you give to it when you talk about History, you were probably damn important and life changing to each and every student you had in class."

She could feel heat rising to her cheeks, and she was sure she was blushing as she just let out a small, "Thank you."

"No problem, but what about when this is all done? You going to go back to teaching at Stanford?" Wyatt pondered, hoping to change the topic to something less deep.

"Maybe," Lucy nodded her head, "I actually have always wanted to go East, teach at a smaller college, the only thing stopping me was always that my mom said I couldn't leave her, but as you can imagine, I don't care about that much anymore." She gave him a slight laugh, which he returned.

"Yeah, I can imagine."

"Then again, do you remember what you said when we got back from 1954? About going back to Pendleton?" She pondered, hoping he would, hoping that their conversation that night meant as much to him as it did to her.

He raised an eyebrow before asking, "That that's how it works or that it could wait a little bit?"

"That that's how it works," She took another sip of her drink, which was down to the last sips, before continuing, "Technically I'm only on leave at Stanford right now, and it's not like I can go find and apply to teach somewhere else right now when I don't know when this will all end. It is my job. I'll probably just end up going back to it."

"Well, I say follow your dreams," Wyatt lifted his hand to her before continuing, "But hey! You should get tenure soon at Stanford, and maybe you'll go on sabbatical to wherever I'm serving after this."

"Well, that would be my hopes," Realizing what she had said, her eyes went comically wide and explained, "That I would get tenure. But ending up where you're serving would be a very interesting twist of fate too."

"Might just change my view on fate too," Wyatt said and smirked at her, getting a smile in return before he slammed his hand down on the table and said, "Listen, I'm basically sober now and you need more drunk after all this teacher talk. I'm getting us a round of shots."

"Okay," She stifled back a laugh as she watched him leave to order some. But she couldn't hold it back any more once she heard him yell back at her …

"Your drinks have been far too girly up until now!"

* * *

By the time they decided to call it a night, admittedly too close than they would like to admit to when the bar was actually closing, they stood outside. Apparently Wyatt's apartment wasn't too far, and he was planning on walking – or, whatever you could call the stumbling of his – but Lucy's Uber had said it was finishing a trip nearby, and even then would be eight minutes to get there and he insisted on staying with her until it did.

Through the laughs and the fact neither were particularly keeping their balance well and leaning so much on each other, somehow, it happened. Neither fully knew how, they just knew suddenly there was a lot of hair in Lucy's face, and after Wyatt brushed it away, he leaned down to kiss her. It was warm, much more warm than even the vodka shots from earlier. Somehow both intoxicating and sobering. Becoming lost in the kiss, Lucy cursed herself when her phone vibrated and they broke away to check in, her Uber would be arriving in about four minutes now.

They didn't go back to the kiss, but it was suddenly a different feeling of him staying with her to make sure she was okay than it was before.

* * *

It would be a couple days before Rittenhouse took the mother ship out again, which Lucy was thankful for as she wasn't sure she would do well with the hangover she had.

Finding what outfit was appropriate to travel to 1881 DC, she felt Wyatt approach her and suddenly got a smile on her face, which went away after she heard what he had to say.

It was the alcohol. That's all that caused the kiss and he needed to make sure she knew that, to which she replied she did. But, as she suddenly just picked a random dress and walked quickly to the dressing room, she knew that, at least in her heart, that wasn't the case.

Unbeknownst to her, if he had to be truthful, in his heart and mind, that was far from the case as well.

* * *

Unbeknownst to either of them, nothing had happened with Jiya's grandmother that night.

All that Jiya and Rufus wanted to do was make their friends as happy together as they are.


End file.
